Bernard Hopkins to fight Joe Smith on Dec. 17 in final career fight
The curtain is about to come down on the fabled fighting career of boxing legend Bernard Hopkins, but not before one last hurrah.
Golden Boy promoter Oscar De La Hoya told Dan Rafael of ESPN on Monday that the 51-year-old Hopkins (55-7-2, 32 KOs) will fight 27-year-old Joe Smith (22-1, 18 KOs) on December 17 at The Forum in Inglewood, California in his final career bout.
Hopkins, a former two-division world champion, has been fighting professionally since 1988 and has put together perhaps the best battle against Father Time that the sport has ever seen, using fundamentals and a cunning defensive style to last nearly three decades in the ring.
But Hopkins is coming off a walloping at the hands of Sergey “Krusher” Kovalev in November 2014, after which he faced many calls to retire. He’ll get a final go at it in December though, but a Hollywood ending isn’t going to come easy against the power-hitter Smith. Almost a quarter-century Hopkins’ junior, Smith just dismantled Andrzej Fonfara in an upset 10th-round TKO victory last June to win the WBC International Light Heavyweight title.
Hopkins will be saying farewell in what’s almost certain to be a tough test for him, especially at his age. But I’m sure that B-Hop, one of the greatest competitors of his generation, wouldn’t have it any other way.
